Damp (Norwegian band)
Encyclopedia
Damp is a jazz quartet from Oslo
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

, originating from the Norwegian Academy of Music
Norwegian Academy of Music
The Norwegian Academy of Music is a music conservatory located in Oslo, Norway, in the neighbourhood of Majorstuen, Frogner. It is the largest music academy in Norway and offers the country's highest level of music education. As a university college, it offers both undergraduate and postgraduate...

. The band changed its name to Chrome Hill With the release of their third album in 2008.

Music

The music on their first two albums can be described as modern, acoustic jazz, with elements of rock. Some musical influences worth mentioning are musicians like Bill Frisell
Bill Frisell
William Richard "Bill" Frisell is an American guitarist and composer.One of the leading guitarists in jazz since the late 1980s, Frisell's eclectic music touches on progressive folk, classical music, country music, noise and more...

, Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...

, Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....

 and Albert Ayler
Albert Ayler
Albert Ayler was an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist, singer and composer.Ayler was among the most primal of the free jazz musicians of the 1960s; critic John Litweiler wrote that "never before or since has there been such naked aggression in jazz" He possessed a deep blistering tone—achieved...

. Damp released their second album Hoatzin
Hoatzin (album)
Album by Norwegian band Damp. Released 2005 at AIM Records.-Track listing:# Liminality# Hoatzin# Where did the muskox go?# Smack# Hisnakul# Mumbo Jumbo# Surface Scan# Twilight Sone# Expectations lost in hyperspace# A little something#+ Pinball...

 in March 2005 to much acclaim. Damp has also released Mostly harmless (songs)
Mostly harmless (songs)
Album by Norwegian band Damp. Released 2003 at AIM Records.-Track listing:# Indigo# Rask# Between Nearness And Distance# Pinball# Dampveivalsen# Leave It# Fishing Mingus# Welcome# Waves...

 in 2003. Both on AIM Records.

In 2008 their third album Earthlings
Earthlings (album)
Earthlings is an album by the Norwegian band Chrome Hill . The album was released in 2008 by Bolage.Beside the band's regular lineup, Eirik Hegdal plays baritone sax on three tracks.- Track listing :# Zanshin! Zanshin!...

 was released, now under the band name Chrome Hill. Along with the change of name, came also a change of style. The music was no longer acoustic, with Asbjørn Lerheim's use of electric and baritone guitars, and clearly inspired by americana
Americana (music)
Americana is an amalgam of roots musics formed by the confluence of the shared and varied traditions that make up the American musical ethos; specifically those sounds that are merged from folk, country, blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll and other external influential styles...

 and noise rock
Noise rock
Noise rock describes a style of post-punk rock music that became prominent in the 1980s. Noise rock makes use of the traditional instrumentation and iconography of rock, but incorporates atonality and especially dissonance, and also frequently discards usual songwriting conventions.-Style:Noise...

. The album was released by the Norwegian record label Bolage.

Crew

Asbjørn Lerheim, guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

, baritone guitar
Baritone guitar
The baritone guitar is a variation on the standard guitar, with a longer scale length that allows it to be tuned to a lower range. It first appeared in the classical music realm...

, electric guitar
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

. Lerheim is also the leader and co-composer of the vocal jazz quintet Subtonic. He did a tour with New York saxophone player Jon Gordon in Norway 2006. Lerheim has his background from jazz and improvisation studies at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo.

Torstein Lofthus
Torstein Lofthus
Torstein Lofthus is a Norwegian drummer. Major influence on Norwegian music through studio work, live concerts and teaching at Norwegian Academy of Music and at University of Agder . Based in Oslo, he now tours Norway and Europe with different bands and artists after finishing his master at the...

, drums
Drum kit
A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....

. Besides playing the drums in Damp Lofthus is the drummer in Shining
Shining (Norwegian band)
Shining is a Norwegian band that started out as an acoustic jazz quartet in 1999. Their sound has since become more experimental and extreme, incorporating elements from metal and progressive rock as well as 19th and 20th century classical music....

, with albums released on Jazzland Recordings and Rune Grammofon
Rune Grammofon
Rune Grammofon is a Norwegian record label founded in 1998 by Rune Kristoffersen. Rune Grammofon's reputation for lovingly issued experimental electronic music, jazz, and improvised music by Norwegian artists has grown over the years with its artists being featured heavily in magazines such as The...

. He has participated on many soul and pop albums, and is a frequently used session drummer. He also plays with soul singer Torun Eriksen
Torun Eriksen
Torun Eriksen is a Norwegian singer, whose musical talents first came to prominence as a music student at high school in Norway. From the age of six, she sang in various gospel choirs, and by the age of 19 had become a featured soloist. With a background steeped in soul, jazz, pop, and through her...

 and in trio with Per Zanussi and Jon Eberson.

Jørgen Munkeby, alto sax, clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...

. Munkeby is to be heard on a few Norwegian records, and is the leader of the highly acclaimed avant-prog quartet Shining
Shining (Norwegian band)
Shining is a Norwegian band that started out as an acoustic jazz quartet in 1999. Their sound has since become more experimental and extreme, incorporating elements from metal and progressive rock as well as 19th and 20th century classical music....

. Munkeby was also one of the founding members of the nu-jazz band Jaga Jazzist
Jaga Jazzist
Jaga Jazzist is an experimental jazz band from Norway that rose to prominence when the BBC named their first album, A Livingroom Hush , the best jazz album of 2002. The core of the band are brothers and main songwriters Lars and Martin Horntveth...

, of which he was a member until 2002.

Roger Arntzen, bass
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

, double bass
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...

. Arntzen is the bass player in the piano trio In the country, who were chosen as the "Young jazz Musicians Of The Year 2004" at Molde International Jazz Festival. This trio has released two albums on Rune Grammofon
Rune Grammofon
Rune Grammofon is a Norwegian record label founded in 1998 by Rune Kristoffersen. Rune Grammofon's reputation for lovingly issued experimental electronic music, jazz, and improvised music by Norwegian artists has grown over the years with its artists being featured heavily in magazines such as The...

 to much acclaim. He has also been the bass player in bands such as Heidi Skjerve Quintet, Subtonic, Eckhard Baur Movement.

Awards

In August 2001, Damp represented Norway at the Tremplin Jazz d'Avignon festival in Avignon
Avignon
Avignon is a French commune in southeastern France in the départment of the Vaucluse bordered by the left bank of the Rhône river. Of the 94,787 inhabitants of the city on 1 January 2010, 12 000 live in the ancient town centre surrounded by its medieval ramparts.Often referred to as the...

, France, as one of the four bands from Europe. Jørgen Munkeby was awarded the soloist prize.

Discography

  • 2003
    Mostly harmless (songs)
    Mostly harmless (songs)
    Album by Norwegian band Damp. Released 2003 at AIM Records.-Track listing:# Indigo# Rask# Between Nearness And Distance# Pinball# Dampveivalsen# Leave It# Fishing Mingus# Welcome# Waves...


    (Album)
  • 2005
    Hoatzin
    Hoatzin (album)
    Album by Norwegian band Damp. Released 2005 at AIM Records.-Track listing:# Liminality# Hoatzin# Where did the muskox go?# Smack# Hisnakul# Mumbo Jumbo# Surface Scan# Twilight Sone# Expectations lost in hyperspace# A little something#+ Pinball...


    (Album)
  • 2008
    Earthlings
    Earthlings (album)
    Earthlings is an album by the Norwegian band Chrome Hill . The album was released in 2008 by Bolage.Beside the band's regular lineup, Eirik Hegdal plays baritone sax on three tracks.- Track listing :# Zanshin! Zanshin!...


    (Album)

External links

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